Lazio Communications Chief and
spokesman for rightwing Governor Francesco Rocca, Marcello De
Angelis, must quit over one of his band's songs saying Jews are
a "merchant race" and over a December 21 social media post of a
candelabra allegedly echoing Nazi war criminal Heinrich
Himmler's greetings to the winter solstice, the centre left
Democratic Party (PD) said Thursday.
"The De Angelis case is a national problem because it is a wound
to our democracy and for our anti-Fascist Constitution," said
culture and memory pointman Sandro Ruotolo, saying that De
Angelis's claims to have changed ways from his "antisemitic
past" were untrue.
Ruotolo, a former TV journalist, said Premier Giorgia Meloni,
the leader of rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party to which
both DE Angelis and his boss Rocca are close, "must not dismiss
this affair as a local matter".
De Angelis caused a furore earlier this month by saying that
those convicted of the 1980 Bologna train station bombing, which
killed 85 people, were innocent.
One of those convicted is related to him by marriage.
De Angelis, who has a long history of membership in hard right
or centre right parties, is also a singer songwriter whose band
plays the song about Jews as merchants.
De Angelis said Thursday that "I now feel horror over the text
of my song" and said he had buried his past antisemitic comments
as part of the mistakes of youth.
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